Leadership & Personal CredoA credo externalizes our innermost thoughts in a way that readily translates to the types of decisions we face every day. This crystallized representation of our principles acts as a compass in our noisy world, helping us align our actions with our beliefs.

Overcoming CynicismBecause the social and political events that form a person´s worldview lie outside a manager’s control; it is all the more crucial to understand these shifting attitudes, their ability to affect corporate culture, and ultimately, customer experiences.

Mindset SegmentationUnlike marketing segmentation, mindsets provide a method of typing people on a personal and emotional level. Each researcher and business applies mindset segmentation a little bit differently, but they all start with a desire to know how…

The events of 2008 and 2009 abound with lessons for communicators and business leaders alike, even now, almost five years later.

The more we look back and analyze, the more we understand how the seeds of mistrust were sown during that period of extreme volatility. Our institutions of business and government were unprepared from a communications standpoint. Therefore, they were unable to ease consumer anxiety, which caused people to feel more vulnerable. By analyzing those mistakes, and understanding their Impact, we see the path ahead for business. Now, more than ever, everything hinges on trust.

A chairman once said that no one cares about a company’s balance sheet until it matters. Then, It’s all they care about. The same can be said of trust and communication: no one cares about how we uphold trust through communication until it really matters. Then, It’s all that matters.

In business, scenario planning Is applied to rational and functional activities: things like how to exit a building during a fire, or how to manage a company’s balance sheet in light of unforeseeable events. However, scenario planning Is not applied to emotional and non-functional disciplines like trust. More to the point, businesses don’t assess the risk of breaking trust with their customers. In the absence of rigorous scenario planning, companies resort to what they know best during a crisis: providing rational explanations for emotional events. As a result, when communication Is most needed, It falls most miserably.